As is often the case when manipulating raising children, it all comes down to how you phrase things.

As any parent of a toddler knows, getting them to eat things is tricky at best. Especially when it is something new. I don’t know how many times we’ve had something that I *know* she’d like, if only she’d try it. But getting her to even try it is a huge chore.

Well, one of the obvious tricks is to change the name of something to sound more toddler friendly. For example, Evie would not try hamburger. What kid doesn’t like hamburgers? On top of that, she loves ketchup and anything with ketchup on it. So we knew she would like it, but she would never try it. Never, that is, until Sara got the brilliant idea to form the hamburger into “sausage links” instead of patties (like when you make a snake with play doh). Evie loves breakfast sausage, so when we served her “hamburger sausage” one night, and told her she could dip it in ketchup, she was hooked. Now she LOVES hamburger sausage and chows down like crazy on it.

The same thing worked for falafel. Of course, falafel is not even meat, but it does kind of look like sausage. Call it falafel sausage and you’re in business.

I could go on and on with examples. It’s so funny how framing a thing properly changes her attitude entirely.